White House Convenes Trade Session

Published 8:00 pm, Wednesday, June 11, 2003

The Bush administration began discussions Thursday aimed at narrowing differences with 14 other Western Hemisphere countries involved in talks to create the world's largest free trade area.

The two days of meetings were intended to take stock of the negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas before a November meeting in Miami that will bring together all 34 participating countries.

Anti-trade groups complained that more than half of the countries in the negotiations were excluded from this week's gathering. The groups also charged that the administration had picked a remote conference center 70 miles from Washington, in Wye River, Md., as the meeting site in order to limit news coverage.

The agreement "has become a real negotiation with other countries making demands on the United States that are giving the administration political heartburn," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

Wallach said the administration was forced to convene this session in an effort to break a stalemate threatening to sink the goal of an agreement by early 2005.

Brazil and Argentina, the two largest economies in South America, have made no secret of their desires to lower a variety of U.S. trade barriers in such areas as citrus and other farm products as well as steel, textiles and other manufactured goods.

The administration hopes to reach a consensus on negotiating procedures that will ensure success of the Miami conference.

U.S. officials said Maryland meeting was similar to procedures followed by the World Trade Organization in advance of a September meeting of all 144 countries involved in the current round of global trade talks.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Thursday after meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick that Brazil remained interested in pursuing trade liberalization on three tracks: a hemisphere-wide deal under FTAA; the global talks in the WTO; and a separate free trade deal between the United States and four countries _ Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Amorim said Zoellick let it be known that the United States "is oriented to talk about the whole process under the FTAA umbrella only."

"It's always good for the process that ministers get together to discuss formats and talk about what they think _ especially what their goals" are for the Miami meeting, Amorin told reporters.

In addition to Brazil, the countries invited to the talks this week were Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.